The Blue Carbon Wealth of Nations

Authors: Christine Bertram, Martin Quaas, Thorsten B. H. Reusch, Athanasios T. Vafeidis, Claudia Wolff, Wilfried Rickels (Nature Climate Change, 2021, 11: 704–709)

Carbon sequestration and storage in mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass meadows is an essential coastal ‘blue carbon’ ecosystem service for climate change mitigation. Here we offer a comprehensive, global and spatially explicit economic assessment of carbon sequestration and storage in three coastal ecosystem types at the global and national levels. We propose a new approach based on the country-specific social cost of carbon that allows us to calculate each country’s contribution to, and redistribution of, global blue carbon wealth. Globally, coastal ecosystems contribute a mean ± s.e.m. of US$190.67 ± 30 bn yr⁻¹ to blue carbon wealth. The three countries generating the largest positive net blue wealth contribution for other countries are Australia, Indonesia and Cuba, with Australia alone generating a positive net benefit of US$22.8 ± 3.8 bn yr⁻¹ for the rest of the world through coastal ecosystem carbon sequestration and storage in its territory.

Keywords: Climate-change mitigation, Economics, Marine biology

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01089-4